Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #294 - Dragons of Tarkir, Part 6

Episode Date: January 8, 2016

Mark concludes his six-part series on the design of Dragons of Tarkir.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so I've been talking in the last podcast, last bunch of podcasts, all about Dragons of Tarkir. So today, the plan is the final episode of Dragons of Tarkir.

I got up to S, so I think I'm going to close this out today. Okay, we're going to begin with Sidisi, Undead Vizier. Three black black, so five mana, two of which is black. Four six legendary creature, Zombie Naga. She has Death Touch, and she has Exploit, meaning when she enters the battlefield, you can sacrifice a creature.

And if you do, you get a tutor for any card, meaning go in your library, get any card you want, and put it in your hand. Okay, so Sidisi is another of the former Khan cycle. So we've met Anafenza already. She died. She's a ghost. We met Narset. She became a planeswalker.

Well, what happened to Sidisi? Well, for starters, she's a zombie naga. When she was a Khan, she was just a naga. Narset means she has died. So two of the Khans so far have died. Anafenza became a ghost and Sidisi became a zombie.

So things aren't so good for the Khans on this side of the timeline. For most of the Khans at least. I guess Narset did a little better maybe. I don't know. I don't know how to count Narset. Narset at least is a Planeswalker. Sedisi and Anaphanza both met somewhat untimely fates.

This card is interesting. It's a Demonic Tutor, so it's Exploit for Demonic Tutor. It's something that we, once upon a time in Alpha, Richard made Demonic Tutor. It was a black card that let you go get any card out of your library for two mana. Turned out to be a little good.

It's one of the early broken cards in Magic. And so it's something that we, like I said, I've talked about this, how we've been sort of pulling back a little bit on how much tutoring we've been doing. But we still do some tutoring. And this was a high-profile card. It was to DC. We try to make sure the cons...

Oh, another cool thing that we did, just for people to notice, is when we did the cons in Khans of Tarkir, none of them had the keywords of their clan. So we made sure that each one of them fit in a clan and had the right strategy to play, but none actually used the keywords of the clan. Notice in play, but none actually used the keywords of the clan. Notice in this cycle, they all used the keywords of the clan. So, Anafenza used his bolster. Narset had rebound. Sidisi has exploit.

We haven't got to the other two yet, but a little hint that maybe they're using their keywords too. They are. But anyway, another little nod just to change things a little bit up, make things a little different. Okay, next. Sidisi's Faithful. Okay, Sidisi's Faithful is a blue card.

It costs a single blue. It's a 0-4 Naga Wizard. And when it enters the battlefield, you get to exploit. And if you sacrifice a creature, you get to unsummon something. It means you get to take a creature on the battlefield and put it back in its owner's hands. So this is a cute little card. Now, remember, it costs a single you. So unsummon costs you.

So for all intents and purposes, this is unsummoned but better. Because you can always sacrifice this creature to get the effect. I mean, it's not strictly better than summon in that it's a source 3, not an instant, obviously. But the point is, you can get an unsummon on this card, or if you need it, you can get a 0-4. It's something that, you know, you have the option in if you need to. But anyway, this is a good example of where Exploit's kind of cool is, it allows you to sort of make use of where you want your creatures and when you want to trade them in for the different effects.

And Un-Summon's a good kind of thing where late in the game, and Un-Summon's the kind of effect that costs one mana but can be very, very useful and important in late game. Because when your opponent gets something big out, you can be able to get rid of returns, especially if they got it out using some special means that's not repeatable. If they somehow used a ritual or somehow use something that they don't have anymore,

Unsummon can delay it even more than one turn. Okay, next. Sight of the Scalaros? The Scalelords? Scalelords? Scalelords. Sight of the Scalelords. Four and a green, it's an enchantment. Beginning of your

combat, any creature you control with toughness four or greater gets plus two, plus two until end of turn. So what it does is there's a theme in, I think it's green, black. Toughness matters. We always build in themes for limited, and this was a limited theme. And

in green and red, that is the Aturka colors, there clearly is a thing about wanting to have enough, you want to be formidable, you want enough power in play. But when green got together with black, we wanted to change up a little bit.

And the good thing is that having big powerful creatures, you know, one of the things is green already wants to have big creatures, so it already has a lot of power, but it has a lot of toughness too. So that way green can play with red and care a little bit more power, but play with black, care a little bit more toughness. Green's just big anyway, so it works both directions.

And this card just kind of beats up things that are, that might not be as powerful, but are tough. Next, Silkwrap. It's an enchantment in white, costs two mana, one generic and one white, so two two mana, one generic and one white. So two mana total, one of which is white. You get an exile target creature with a converted mana cost of three or less until this leaves the battlefield.

So this is like Oblivion Ring, but for tiny creatures. So once again, I talked about how because it was the dragon set, we were extra careful not to make it too easy. We didn't want you to invest a lot of mana in your dragon and just have easy removal of the dragons this is another example of something in which um it's smaller now the other cool thing about this card is um if you want to grab a morph or megamorph in this case um you can the problem is if the megamorph is bigger than three mana it can pop out and so you have the ability problem is if the Megamorph's bigger than 3 mana, it can pop out.

And so, you have the ability early on if you want to, to try to get rid of a Megamorph and gamble whether or not it's a big Megamorph or a small Megamorph. But anyway, like I said, we tried, we wanted to make sure we had removal, but we wanted removal to balance with how we were doing dragons. Like I said, a lot of

making certain themes shine is not just making the themes, but making sure you understand what the answers are. Now, we wanted answers to dragons. We knew dragons were going to be major players, but we wanted to be careful not to have too many answers for dragons.

Okay, next. Silumgar Sorcerer. One blue blue, two one, human wizard, has flash, flying, and exploit for a counterspell. So one of the cutesy things we do here is sometimes when you have effects like exploit, normally exploit would only work at sorcery speed because the creature can only be played.

Sorcery speed isn't a real thing. I use the shorthand once in a while. Talking about when you can play instants and when you can play sorceries. The game actually doesn't differentiate at all about how fast a spell is. Instants aren't faster than sorceries. But it is shorthand that a lot of people understand, so I use it.

For those that aren't familiar, I'm not actually implying that there are different speeds of different types of card types. That's actually not true in the rules. That said, if you want to do a counterspell as an exploit, you can't do it on a normal creature because you can't do counter spells when creatures are played. You need to

do it at instant speed so you can respond to spells that are on the stack. So this card solves that by giving it Flash. So Flash shows up in blue and green primarily. Flash is, as I talked about in my primary, secondary, tertiary podcast, Flash, all colors have some access to Flash, because

sometimes there's effects you can only do if they had Flash. And so we do let red, black, and white have Flash if it needs it structurally. Anyway, this is a cool card, and it is neat trying to get different exploit things. This is a more control-ish exploit thing, because it's a counterspell. But anyway,

it's a pretty cool spell. Next, Silumgar Speleater. Two and a blue for a 2-3 Naga Wizard. It's got Megamorph, four and a blue. So five total, one of which is blue. And when it turns face up, you get a counterspell unless its opponent plays three. So you can see there's a lot of counterspelling going on in blue. The idea was the counterspells can both go toward blue-white to play more control-ish, going on in blue the idea was the counter-spells can both go toward blue-white to play more control-ish

but go toward blue-black blue-black has a it also is a controlling deck although a little more blue-white tends to be a little slower traditionally than blue-black although actually

in this case I think blue-white because of the nature of prowess actually is a little bit faster so actually blue-black might be the slower controlling deck in this limited format.

As you can see, I'm just showing you a bunch of different ways you can do counterspells, which is kind of cool. Next, Silvan Gar's command. Three blue-black, so five mana, one of which is blue, one of which is black, instant. Choose two. You can counter-target non-creature spell. You can bounce target

permanent. You can, target creature gets minus three, minus three until end of turn. Or you can destroy target non-creature spell, you can bounce target permanent, target creature gets minus three, minus three until end of turn, or you can destroy target planeswalker. Once again, notice we danced around dragons a little bit. This card doesn't really, it's not really effective against dragons. It can counter a non-creature spell, so it can counter spells that care about dragons, and it can counter a few spells that make dragon tokens, but it can't really counter dragons. And then it gives target creature minus three, minus three as one of the nodes. So that kills small dragons, but doesn't kill most of the bigger dragons.

So it does a pretty good job of being something that is effective. And I mean, this is a good controlling card. I mean, it does a lot of different things. It counters, it bounces. It destroys smaller creatures. It also can destroy planeswalkers. So, by the way, once again, the first two abilities are the blue abilities. The second two abilities are the black abilities. Black can destroy target planeswalkers.

That's where that ability comes from. This day, a lot of the times you'll see it destroy a target creature or a planeswalker. We do that a lot now. But black can just straight up destroy a planeswalker. That came about because Eric Lauer came to me, he's head developer, and he was worried that Black was having problems, that there were three different permanent types it couldn't directly deal with. It had Disc Artifacts,

but it couldn't destroy permanents of Artifacts or Enchantments or Planeswalkers. And so he said, okay, really, one of the three of these we need to get Black access to. And I said, well, flavor-wise, color-pie-wise, Black should have no problem killing Planeswalkers. One of the big problems it has need to get Black access to. And I said, well, flavor-wise, color-pie-wise, Black should have no problem killing planeswalkers. One of the big problems it has with artifacts and enchantments is

Black's number one weapon is death. Well, death's not good at killing non-animate, non-living things. But planeswalkers, they're living things. So I said it made perfect sense. Black can be able to kill a planeswalker. That's kind of what Black can do. So we added that to the repertoire of what Black can do. The other thing, and then it's interesting.

I'm not sure it matters as much on this one. One of the things that's interesting is we had to be careful what order we put the spells because when you pick two modes, they go off in the order of the mode you pick. So if you pick A and C, then A goes off first and C goes off first. So we definitely, I'm not sure if it matters in this one, but sometimes it mattered the order that you did things. And so we had to be careful doing them. We did group the colors together.

Like I mentioned on the green, white one. Normally you would have had green go first and white go second. We had white go first, I think because of the order we wanted them. But anyway, that is Silumgar's command. Okay, next up. Skywise Teaching. So it's an enchantment that costs three and a blue. So four mana total, one of which is blue.

Whenever you play a non-creature spell, you may pay one and a blue. And if you do, so pay two mana, one of which is blue, you get a 2-2 flying blue djinn token. So the idea here is that... A things go on this card. One is, okay, so there's a theme in both Ojetai slash Jeskai of carrying with non-creature spells that reward you.

Obviously prowess was what you got in Jeskai. And then there's a lot of triggers. Although, even Jeskai also had a bunch of when you play a non-creature spell. So this one does something different. For most, though, it requires mana. So we had most of the effects we had

done previously, just you got the effect. Like, okay, play a non-creature spell, get this thing. The problem was getting a 2-2 creature was a little more powerful. So what we decided was, okay, we can make you pay a little extra. Essentially, the way it works here is it's kind of a kicker spell,

in that every time you cast a nine creature spell, it graphs onto it a kicker cost of one and a blue. Meaning, you can always upgrade your spells to get an extra 2-2 token along with it, your nine creature spells. Note that it's a djinn token. Normally, a 2-2 token would be a bird or a drake. In this set, there's dragons, obviously. You're trying to figure out what the small flatters would be

in blue. I mean, even were an option. I think they went with the djinn for two reasons. One, when they were building this world, they decided djinns are an early part of magic. If you go all back to Alpha, the Mahamori djinn, and then the first expansion

was the Arabian Nights, which had a bunch of djinns in it. That early magic had a bunch of djinns, which is a fancy way of saying genie, by the way, for those that don't know. When you think of, like, Aladdin, you know, the genie, that is what the djinns are. It is just a slightly fancier way of saying a genie.

Djinns and freets also showed up in Raven Knights. Djinns were very popular, and eventually the creative team decided that, you know, just, you know, djinns don't make sense on lots of worlds, and so they ended up... We tried, actually, for a while we tried Jyn as the iconic for blue. Didn't quite take off.

It had a little extra baggage to it. And it didn't always fit in a lot of worlds. So we ended up moving over to Sphinx. But we hadn't done Jyn in a while. And when they were trying

to do cons, the creative team said, you know what? Jyns might actually be a cool fit here. And so they put them in, and I think they were mostly in the Jeskai clan. Which here is the Ojitai clan, obviously.

But anyway, that's why you get little tutu Jins. Okay, next. Stormrider Rig. It's an artifact equipment for two. Equip creature gets plus one, plus one. And then creatures enter the battlefield under your control. Whenever a creature enters the battlefield under your control,

you can attach card name to it. And that has equipped cost of two. So this is a little equipment. So real quickly, let me talk a little bit about equipment. Because we introduced equipment in the game in Mirrodin. Before that, Magic had just done equipment in normal artifacts. There were swords and flying carpet. There were things in which the way it worked is you tapped it,

and then you essentially affected a creature. And as long as it stayed tapped, it stayed connected to that creature. Usually, if something happened to the creature, you also lost the thing, like flying carpet. Like, oh, now you can fly if you ride the flying carpet. But if the creature dies, you lose the flying carpet. That's how it worked early on. And Mirrodin decided that we wanted to figure out

how to sort of do that flavor. And so we came up with equipment. It was evergreen, almost instantaneous. I mean, we had it for the block because normally a mechanic will save for the block. And then after that, we picked it up right away. It was just the flavor of having objects that you can give

to your creatures was very powerful. I also should note, by the way, it's funny. Artifacts, when the game first started, artifacts represented truly things of the past, right? They were artifacts dug up from the world. I mean, the earliest story, which was in Antiquities, which is the story the Brothers' War, of Urza and of Mishra, they were artificers. They were finding lost items from the Thran Empire, the power stones

and different things. And so artifacts really start with the idea of these ancient things that you've dug up. And then over time, it started to become a little more mundane in that we used artifacts to represent also anything that was constructed. So if you made a sword or you made, you know, a shield, those also became artifacts. And I think equipment was trying to sort of take some of the general equipment type things and take it out of the hands of you, the player,

and make it more of something you would grant to your creatures. And we tried a lot of things, and at some point, have I done a Mirrodin podcast? We started with equipment, it's funny, we really were trying to do artifact versions of auras. That's where we started, actually. They were just like auras, but they were colorless.

Eventually we realized that we needed to be a little bit different. We wanted a little more permanence. We liked the idea that if you kill my creature who has a sword, well, the sword falls to the ground. It's not gone. You can pick up the sword. And so equipment ended up being very popular, and so we ended up putting a lot of equipment in places early on.

But what we found was it's really overpowering. You have to be careful. And so we've scaled back a bit. We still have equipment in every set. Obviously we have equipment right here, but we've scaled back a little bit because it's the kind of thing that if you push it a little bit too much, it gets a little too daunting, especially in Limited. And so it's something we want a little bit of flavoring of.

Certain sets will push it up more. There are sets in which equipment plays a larger role. But most of the time, it's the kind of thing we'll have a little bit of and not push too much. Okay, next. Strong-armed monk. Four and a white for a 3-3 human monk.

So five mana, one of which is white. Whenever you cast a non-creature spell, creatures you control get plus one, plus one to end a turn. Okay, so this is

an interesting one. So one of the things that's neat to do sometimes on cards is make cards that have an internal challenge in them, but make it fun to try to crack. So this one says, okay, every time you play a non-creature spell, your creatures get plus one, plus one.

Okay, but you need non-creature spells to make this work, and you need creatures to make the effect work. How do you balance that? Now there's a couple answers. One is, you can just play creatures with prowess because this sort of says,

okay, they're already getting, each one's getting a boost naturally because of prowess, and this is sort of adding extra prowess to everything. The second thing you can do, and this is another

very popular thing, is there's lots of ways to make creature tokens that themselves are non-creatures. So you could fill your deck full of non-creature spells, but still make a lot of tokens,

meaning you could sort of... If you're making a lot of token makers, this effect allows you to... I mean, this thing itself is a creature, obviously, but it allows you to play a lot of non-creature spells, make a lot of tokens, and it's constantly boosting your things. Somebody pointed out, by the way,

that this card, in a vacuum, in a deck without any other creatures is kind of like it has prowess, because it boosts itself plus one, plus one. So this is the kind of thing where I think we had talked about doing in fact, I think the spell was in cons originally and the idea was, oh, well it's a prowess creature but it also grants prowess to other creatures.

And the problem was because it was it's a prowess creature, but it also grants prowess to other creatures. And the problem was, we, because it was so close to prowess, we didn't want this not to have prowess, but then they became ugly before I could write it. Like, I have prowess, and then also I have the ability that, you know, anyway.

It became cleaner to wait until we didn't have prowess. Ironically, prowess was then go evergreen, so we, the one niche in which prowess existed, but prowess wasn't in the set, so. There was only one set that was true, and oncerowess was in Go Evergreen, so the one niche in which Prowess existed, but Prowess wasn't in the set. So there was only one set that was true once Prowess was introduced. So luckily we snuck it in in the right set. Okay, next.

Summit Prowler. Two red red for 4-3 Yeti. Okay. So the funny thing about this card, for those that know, is Summit Prowler was in Khans of Tarkir. So one of the things, when we sat down early on with Khans of Tarkir, we were doing the block design and said, okay, let's come up with interesting schticks, like this is the present, now we have the past, and this is the present, now it's the alternate present, and this is the past, and now it's the alternate timeline. How do you make different connections between each of the sets? So one of the things that I really wanted to do between Khans of Tarkir

and Dragon of Tarkir I really wanted to do between Contra Targir and Dragon Targir is I wanted one creature not to change. And the idea is, you know, Sarkhan goes back, he changes the timeline, things are different. And like, well, yeah, the world's a different world and dragons run rampant over it and they're dragon warlords and all sorts of things have changed. It's a radically different world. But for one creature, it turned out to be the Summit dragon warlords, and all sorts of things have changed. It's a radically different world. But, for one creature, turned out to be the Summit Prowler, a Yeti,

eh, nothing's changed. And the funny thing is, if you look at the card, it's the same art from Kanzas Tarkir, except dragons have been added. So, it literally, the same Yeti, same pose, same creature, 4-3 Vanilla, and a Vanilla, by the way, was a perfect place to do this, which is, look, every set's going to have a same creature, 4-3 Vanilla.

And a Vanilla, by the way, was a perfect place to do this, which is, look, every set's going to have a Vanilla. We need a Vanilla anyway. Now we have a Vanilla that has a purpose. Like, it has a role. The funny thing is, we didn't tell Creative specifically this creature. What we said to them was, we wanted one

creature to be the same. I think I suggested that maybe one to be a vanilla creature, just because that way you can take a vanilla creature that isn't doing too much other than being a simple vanilla creature and has a cute role. The art thing was their choice. If you go look at the Summit Prowler. So there's the Summit Prowler, and then the Summit Prowler in Dragons. You know, Khan suggests there's a Yeti. And then you get to the, um,

the, uh, dragons one and like same picture, just add the dragons in the background. But you know, for the Yeti, eh, um, I think, I think this card, the design name for this card was Not Yeti, only because we knew it was a Yeti and we thought it was funny to call it Not Yeti. But, uh, ironically it is a Yeti. So Not Yeti was a Yeti. So its it was funny to call it not Yeti. But ironically, it is a Yeti. So not Yeti was a Yeti. So its name was confusing, but funny. Okay, next, Sunscorched Regent. So this is the white version of the Regent cycle, the rare dragon cycle. Three white, white. So five mana, two of which is white.

For a 4-3 dragon, it is flying. And whenever an opponent casts a spell, it gets a plus one, plus one counter. And you gain one life. So this dragon's a little different. This dragon is, I mean, still, how big is it? It's a 4-4, I think. Yeah, 4-3. It's still a 4-3 dragon, still

can chip a 4 every turn. Flies, obviously, dragons all fly. But this one sort of, like, saves your opponent, goes, okay, I get bigger because of you. You can stop playing spells. You don't want to play spells? You don't need to make my guy bigger. But it's the kind of thing where your opponent

sort of has to play spells, unless they have a super advantage on you already. So the neat thing about this thing is this dragon's going to keep growing. You're not going to stop it from growing. So it is kind of neat to watch. For those wondering, by the way, before I finish, it is raining here. It's not raining hard enough that you can hear it through my microphone, but it's raining. And for those, the one thing that you should learn with Drive

to Work, the podcast, is Seattleites can't drive in the rain, even though it rains all the time. Uh, Seattleites can't drive in the rain, even though it rains all the time. Um, so it's slow going today because, um, because we have, uh, rain. And so anyway, I'm sitting in traffic. Um, interesting challenge for me in these days is I, for example, this is my last podcast. I have so many cards and then I'm done. Uh, and I want to make sure that when I get to work that I finish off the podcast and I have all the stuff. Um, so one thing you'll notice

is, this is a good example, like normally, by the way, if I'm just doing a normal design series, and this happened a couple podcasts ago

where I had an hour drive to work, I just, you know, keep going. If I do double the amount of cards, I do double the amount

of cards. Today, I only have so many cards I have until I end. So I have to do a little filler today. So, if I'm telling you more stories, filling you in on why we did things,

a little more historical perspective, that's what I'm up to. Well, I have a decent amount of drive left. I figured out very early on that it was going slow, so I've been pacing myself. Anyway, let's get back to Sunscorch Regent. So, one of the things that's neat about this cycle, the monocolor cycle, is most Iconics we stick to their color. Dragons we make a special case for. And like I said, dragons are, whenever we do market research,

dragons always do really well. Usually they win handily when we ask directly about creature types. I don't know what it is about dragons. I mean, they're super fantasy. It's funny that Dungeon Dragons, who uses dragons all the time, they're so popular there,

I mean, they're in the name, obviously, that they have dragons for all different types of dragons. And I think that if we hadn't used dragons as an iconic, that it would be something you would just see a lot more in different colors, that there are a lot of different kinds of dragons. So one of the things we were trying to do in Dragon's Ashark here is, because dragons are Red's iconic, Red really wants a certain style of dragon. It wants a wilder dragon.

It wants a dragon, you know, breathing fire. And, you know, Red's all about freedom and sort of doing its thing. So a Red dragon really has a certain style to it, and that's really where we tend to do dragons. So one of the neat things about this set is there are a lot of different types of dragons. Like, in fact, it's funny. Tiamat, who's a famous dragon in Dungeon Dragons, is a dragon that's a five-headed dragon that's five different colors of dragon. What colors are they? Hmm. White, blue, black, red, green. Now, I think that's total coincidence.

I don't think Richard was influenced by Tiamat, because Tiamat predates magic. But, it's interesting, in the danger room, which is one of our meeting rooms right near R&D, we have Tiamat up on the wall for some reason, and every time I see it, I keep going, oh, look at the five colors of magic. So, one of the fun things about

Dragons of Tarkir was just the idea that we could show off different kinds of dragons. That you get to see the ice dragon in blue. And this is a much more serene sort of dragon in white. This is clearly like I'm sort of being powered by my opponent. It's a little smarter. I like having different styles of dragons. I think that's kind of cool. Okay, next. Surge of Righteousness.

It's an instant that costs two mana, one generic, one white. So two mana total, one of which is white. Destroy target attacking or blocking creature. Sorry. Destroy target attacking or blocking black or red creature. You gain two life. So once again, this is the color hosing cycle.

In each case, it finds a way to manage, destroy the opponent, or not destroy. It managed to harm the opponent inosing cycle. In each case, it finds a way to manage, destroy the opponent, or not destroy, it manages to harm the opponent in some way. It's a color hosing spell. Here, it's white doing a, white's allowed to kill

attacking blackened creatures. Okay, well what do I kill attacking blackened red creatures? It helps white be defensive against blackened red, but also be offensive because it can destroy blackened creatures.

And you also gain a little bit of life. White likes to gain life. There's also a little bit of a mirror between the black and white spells. Black and white both have kill spells, and they both gain life off them. Although black forces sacrifice, where white can only kill things that attack or block.

So each one has limitations, but limitations more tied to their color. I am not sure why the color hosting cycle is in this set. It was not, I don't remember it being in design, so I think it got added in development. Here's my guess what was going on. My guess is they needed one or two of them for standard, and they felt like if they just put them in, that it would feel like it would stand out like a sore thumb. And so what they did is they made a cycle so that the standard

ones could get made that they needed. That's my guess. Actually, I don't definitively know that, but I've been doing this job for a long time. That is a pretty educated guess. That is my guess on why there's a color-hosting cycle. It was hiding that... Also, my guess, looking at

the black one, which destroyed green and white things, made them sacrifice. The fact it made them sacrifice says to me that it might have been like a troublesome green hexproof creature. Okay, my knowledge of standard ain't that great, so maybe you listen and go, of course, it was such and such. But anyway, they were definitely trying to answer something, and that's what I think the cycle was. Okay, next, Surak, the Hunt Caller. So we are our fourth member of the former Khan cycle. Aye, aye, aye.

So it's funny. I have to go on two freeways to get to work. The 5 and the 405. And so the 5 usually is a more busier freeway. And so once I get off the 5 and the 405, usually it's easier going. But today, that was not the case. I get to the 405 and it's also busy. Oh, Seattleites in your rain.

Why don't you understand? You drive in the rain all the time. You should be like experts in driving in the rain. The thing is weird. I grew up in Cleveland in which we had a lot of snow. And people get pretty good at driving in the snow because it's snowy all the time. So I come to Seattle and I go, it rains all the time. People should be expert rain drivers.

But I used to live in Los Angeles before I moved up here. And Los Angeles, it just doesn't rain very often. Like the newscasters, whenever they're doing the newscast, whenever it's going to rain, it's like some miracle crazy thing. Oh my, water's going to fall from the sky! They're so used to not having rain.

In Los Angeles, the freeways get pretty oily, but because it never rains, when it rains, they get super slick. So in Los Angeles, when it rains, both it's a really odd thing for Los Angelinos to see, and the roads actually are a little slipper than normal. In Los Angeles, I mean, Los Angeles traffic normally is to a crawl because you can't move. But Los Angeles drivers, they slow way down in the rain.

I get that. I get that. It just never rains in Los Angeles. And so when I lived in Los Angeles, I mean, I avoided the freeways, but when I was on the freeway and it rained, I got it. I understood it. You know, to them, it was a freak occurrence. There was water falling from the sky. But in Seattle, I know. You can tell I'm stalling here

and also venting my frustration at Seattle drivers. Okay, let's get back to this thing. Ciroc, the hunt caller. So this let's get back to this thing. Surak, the Hunt Caller. So this was the fourth member. So of the five Khans, so let's recap what's going on so far. Anafenza, dead. Tree Spirit. Narset, Planeswalker, although not the leader of her tribe.

And Sidisi, zombie. Surak does a little better. Surak actually is second in command to Atarka, I believe. So, he is... Of the cons, he's high up there. He is definitely like

the right-hand man to Atarka. I think Atarka, I don't know, appreciates that he punches dragons. I'm not sure what about Sorak, maybe that he can handle them. I don't know, appreciates that he punches dragons. I'm not sure what about Sorak, maybe that he can handle himself. I don't know. Something about Sorak made Atarka appreciate him. And so, of the five cons, he's only one in any role of authority, really.

So, anyway, what does this card do? Let's talk about this card. So, I didn't write down the mana cost. It's a 5-4 Legendary Creature Human Warrior. 5-4... My guess is he costs, like, 4 mana, 4 or 5 mana? Sorry. He has Formidable,

which means if you have 8 or more power of creatures, at the beginning of your combat, target creature gains haste. So, he does something a little off the beaten track, which is... Haste is tertiary in green. I've talked about this before, that when I wanted to get haste and add it to a second color, development really wanted it in green because for constructive purposes, it's very valuable for green.

The problem is, for limited purposes, design really wanted it in black, that green didn't really need it. And we were trying to sort of diversify, you know, green and red have a lot more similar creatures than black and red. It also allowed us to get to flyers, which we wanted. We wanted to have some haste flyers. So what we did, the compromise we reached is black is secondary in black. Haste is secondary in black, tertiary in green. But the deal I struck with Eric is, Eric uses that in green on usually very strong cards.

So while it is secondary in green from a constructed standpoint, for all intents and purposes, it's secondary in green. Like, green has plenty of haste creatures that get played in constructed because they're used very judiciously by development and mostly put on creatures intended for constructed. Because of that, because it's secondary, green doesn't grant haste very much. Usually when you're a secondary color, you have it every once in a while, but you don't grant it. This is a special occurrence. One of my favorite cards from back in the day, Concord and Crossroads. I used to play this green-blue deck. I play it real quickly, as an aside, probably because I'm sitting in traffic.

When I, back before I came sitting in traffic, when I, back, before I came to Wizard, there was a time around when Legends came out that because of the Abyss and a couple other cards going on, it was just stupid to play creatures. Nobody played creatures.

Well, I was a Johnny, wasn't going to listen to conventional wisdom, so I made this white-green, sorry, this green-blue weenie creature deck. And one of the things about the deck is I wanted to hit really fast and really hard.

So I made use of a card called Concordant Crossroads, which was in a world enchantment, or in Simon's Enchant World, now called World Enchantments. The way World Enchantments work is when you play one, you displace any other one in play. That is, you're shifting where the battle's happening. And Concordant Crossroads both allowed me to attack faster

and got rid of the Abyss, which was a big, big problem. You needed to run a world enchantment to deal with there was Nether to Void, there was the Abyss, a bunch of really, mostly they were in black, dangerous, warpy world enchantments.

Anyway, so I was a big fan of Concordant Crossroads, and when I actually came, I made Fervor, which is a red version of Concordant Crossroads, and when I actually came, I made Fervor, which is a red version of Concordant Crossroads, meaning it grants all your creatures. I guess Concordant Crossroads grants everybody haste. Fervor grants your creatures haste.

But anyway, I like it. Green really wasn't supposed to be... Haste wasn't supposed to be a green thing. But, as a special exception, this is special. This is, you know, a special con. So, he gets to grant creatures haste. Although he doesn't grant all your creatures haste, he grants one creature a turn haste. Which means, essentially, it encourages you not to play lots of weenie creatures, but play one bigger creature.

Because you can grant one creature a turn haste. So, it definitely encourages bigger play. So, while this is formidable, formidable can encourage both a few big creatures or a lot of small creatures this Surak Surak he he remembers the olden days

when he ran the con I mean he doesn't actually but deep inside or something and he likes bigger creatures so Surak also goes like the old Surak did in a bigger creature deck

I like the fact with the cons by the way that they they took them down many different paths. It wasn't like all of them had worse lives. I mean, I guess they were cons in the first one. But I like that Narset and Surak, you know,

positive things happen for them. It's not all down. But you look at the other three, they haven't gotten to Zergo yet. But they do a little less work. A little worse. Okay, next. Swift Warkite. So Swift Warkite.

So Swift Warkite is a dragon. 4-4 dragon. Costs 6 mana. 4 black, red. So 6 mana total. 1 black, 1 red. 1 of which had to be black. 1 of which had to be red.

When it enters the battlefield, you can put a creature of converted mana that costs 3 or less from either your hand or from your graveyard onto the battlefield. It gains haste. And then at the end step, you or less from either your hand or from your graveyard onto the battlefield. It gains haste, and then at the end step, you put it back in your hand.

Or you put it into your hand if it was in the graveyard. Either way. So the idea is, this card is... So there's two effects. This card's actually taking two old-school effects. One is taking creatures from the graveyard and letting you attack with them. What was that called? That was called Ashen Powder.

Black spell. Although ironically it's a spell that we've been talking about maybe allowing Red to do, in that Red can reanimate things just for a turn. Anyway, something that we've been arguing may be something that Red can do. And this spell, it's the black portion of the spell. And then Red

has an ability called Sneak Attack. I made in Tempest. Originally called Blitzkrieg in design. And that allows you to play... That was an enchantment that had an activated ability, but this is a one-shot. That lets you take a creature card from your hand.

Although the way that... Did they go back to your hand with Sneak Attack? I think they went in play and then they got sacrificed. I don, did they go back to your hand with, uh, sneak attack? I think they went in play and then they got sacrificed. I don't think they went back in your hand. But anyway, this one's sort of doing an ashen powder thing, sort of doing a sneak attack thing, but in the end it's giving it back to you. Um, so if you do the, the black version, it allows you to sort of reanimate something. If you do the red version, it allows you to just get something on your hand.

Um, usually you'll get stuff out of the graveyard if you can, because that way, not only did you get an attack from something in your graveyard, but you get it back to cast again. So usually this is used out of the graveyard. So this is black-red. This is Kulaghan. So this is what Mardu became. So this is definitely

more aggro. Normally, black and red is not aggro. This was development. When I actually made black-red an aggro. Normally, black and red is not aggro. This was development. When I actually made black, red, and aggro deck in Innistrad, and Eric pulled me aside and said, just so you're aware, because usually black, red is a control deck and not in limited,

and not an aggro deck, because black and red had the best creature removal. And so usually the answer is, fill up on creature removal, and then have some, you know, I'm just going to blow every creature that causes me problems up and then eventually I'll kill you with something. So

when you want to make black and red more aggressive, you have to sort of push in certain directions. So this card is definitely one of the cards where it's rewarding you for playing smaller creatures because Kolaghan slash Mardu want smaller creatures. So this is definitely a dragon. The colored dragons, the two-colored dragons,

we're definitely trying to reinforce, especially this guy, trying to reinforce what the clan is about and what you're trying to do. We normally do uncommon gold cards to sort of remind you in draft. This set, because it was a gold set, we did more than just uncommon, but you'll notice the gold cards definitely are pushing you

in certain directions, saying, this is the style that this deck wants to play. Okay, next. Tygons, Tygons, Tygons, Tygons strike. Oh, real quick aside on Tygon, by the way. So one of the things we did is we did a former con cycle in which we had Anafenza, and we had Narset, and we had Sedisi, We had Anafenza, and we had Narset, and we had Sidisi, and we had Surak, and we had Zergo. But Narset was a Planeswalker, so she wasn't a legendary creature card. The other four were all legendary creature cards. Also, I think because we were doing the dragons, the dragon lords at Mythic Rare, we did the content rare. Except for Narset, because she's a Planeswalker.

So we had four legendary Planeswalkers that were ally color combination oh no I'm sorry they were mono color they were mono color combinations so there was a white and a black and a green and a red mono color rare legendary creature and so the players were like hey you didn't finish the cycle where's the mono blue legendary creature

and we're like well no no no the cycle is former cons they're like, well, no, no, no, no. The cycle is former Khans. They're like, well, no, no, no, but Nerset is not mono-blue. She's blue-white. She's not a creature. She's a planeswalker. She doesn't count.

And we're like, well, who did you expect to be there? And they're like, Tygom. Because in the story, Tygom ends up filling the role that Nerset did. I mean, she's not the leader because Ochitai is but he's kind of the right man to Ochitai sort of what Sorak is and so where's Taigam because he was in the story

and like we did you know the thing is there's only so many legendary creatures we make and we're like look we made a cycle of legendary dragons we made a cycle of I mean a cycle of cons which four of them are legendary but anyway we got a lot of grief for not having Tycoms, which is a sign, by the way, for those that listen to my podcast all the time. Man, people like their patterns.

Be very careful when you break patterns. Aesthetics really matter, and that people are so used to having certain dynamics that when you break them, be warned. I mean, we broke it on purpose here. We like the idea that Narset wasn't normal, that she became a planeswalker. We broke it with our eyes open. But even knowing that, man,

and the funny thing is, when they were missing something, the audience filled it in. They're like, okay, we need a monocle creature. Oh, look in the story. Okay, here's a creature they talked about in the story. It's got a name.

He shows up in, you know, like, Taigam Strike. He shows up with a card name. Oh, he's important. Okay, it should have been Tigam. So, anyway, no Tigam, but that was a big deal at the time. Anyway, Tigam Strike. Three and a blue, four mana, one which is blue, sorcery.

Target creature goes plus two, plus oh, and is unblockable, or cannot be blocked until end of turn. We tried to make unblockable into a keyword. At the same time, we made indestructible into a keyword. The problem was there's too many riders of when you're unblockable, and so we weren't able toblockable into a keyword. At the same time, we made indestructible into a keyword. The problem was there's too many riders of when you're unblockable, and so we weren't able to make it into a keyword. So we changed it from unblockable to cannot be blocked to make it not sound like a keyword,

because when I say target creature becomes unblockable, that sounds like it's gaining a creature word called unblockable. That's why we made that change. This effect, there's a very similar effect. Rebound is a reprint from the mechanic from Rise of the Odrazi. There was a similar one there. I think it was plus one plus O and couldn't be blocked. And that kind of played really well. It's a really good rebound card. Sort of, oh, this thing is rebound. I did say it's rebound.

So it's target creature plus two plus O and unblockable to underturn. And it's rebound. And so that turned out to be a really good effect. It's a nice way to sneak things through. Okay, next. Tail Slash. 2R instant. A creature you control deals damage equal to its power to target a creature you don't control. So, this is fight, but what we call one-sided

fight, which is red sort of doing direct damage, but using creature power as an indicator. There's a lot of argument here about whether green kind of supposed to be the better fighting color, but because we let red do these kind of effects, like, well, isn't fighting even better if it can't harm you back? So, I don't know. This card causes a lot of discussion, and there's definitely... It's a big debate about what we do with fighting and how to make green the better fighting. Anyway, I will say this, it's something we've discussed

a lot that will play out in the future ok next Tapestry of the Ages, it's an artifact for 4 for 2 and tap draw a card but you may only activate this artifact if you played a non-creature spell this turn so this is a clever little card

it is basically a prowess style card where it says you need to play a non-creature spell. But it's doing something extra cute. It's an activated ability. Why is it an activated ability? Because we don't want you doing it more than once a turn. See, it made the artifact and said every time you play an artifact, you may pay two if you do draw a card. That would allow every non-creature spell to essentially be cantripped.

If you pay an extra two, you can draw a card. That's not what we wanted. What we wanted is, it lets you draw cards but limit to once per turn. And by making an artifact with a tap ability on it, we get that once per turn a little subtler, you know. I think people look at this and the first impression is, oh, it's one of the prowler style non-creature things. It is, but it has a limitation, but it's a subtle limitation.

Then if we had an enchantment that said, you know, Meitu only uses once per turn. In general, we don't like to... When we can not write out once per turn and instead have a tap symbol, we prefer it. It's just a more elegant way of saying once per turn. So... Okay, next.

Thunderbreak Regent. This is the red version of the cycle, the rare cycle. 4-4 dragon. Two red reds, so four mana. Two witches red. Dragons you control. Whenever a dragon you control is the target of a spell or ability, you get to deal three damage to that player's...

to that spell or controller's... that... sorry. Whenever a dragon you control is targeted by a spell or an ability of another player, you deal three damage to that player. So the idea essentially is don't touch my creatures. They can, doesn't stop them, it just punishes them for messing with your creatures.

And the cool thing about it is, it really discourages them from doing smaller, I mean, obviously they're going to kill it, they're probably going to kill it, suck up the three damage, but if they're trying to tap it or lock it down or do something that's a little, that's an answer that's a little less permanent, this makes it much rougher on them. And even if it's just killing them, it's still getting 3 damage in. So it's helping protect your dragons in a nice reddish way.

It protects them very aggressively. Okay, next. Tormenting Voice. 1R for a sorcery. As an additional cost to this card, you can discard two cards. And if you do, you get a draw two cards. So this is a red looting card. The cute thing about this card,

the reason I wrote it down was we did something fun in which this card was mirrored of the card in Khans. In Khans, we see Sarkhan being tormented by the voices of Ugin. And then you get to see Ugin being tormented on this card. So it's a mirror of the art. And I thought that was pretty cool. Okay, next, Vial of Dragonfire.

It's an artifact that costs two. For two tap and sac, you get to deal two damage to a target creature. So this card, it's funny, this is the product of the wizard from, the artificer from long ago, who the card in Fate Refort, renowned weaponsmith, that's what it is.

He made classic weapons, and he made a bow in one timeline, but in this timeline he made a vial of dragonfire. So this is the card that we teased that you knew the name of. Probably the mistake of this card, it's a limited card. It's fine for limited.

I think in retrospect, we should have made the ones we searched for things that maybe were a little more potent. I mean, what happened is, whenever you name a card ahead of time, people are going to dream about the card. And the problem is, you need to live up to the dream.

And this card, well, like I said, a fine limited card is, you need to live up to the dream. And this card, well, like I said, a fine limited card, doesn't really live up to the dream. One day I shall get my hands on, you know, the vial of dragonfire. Oh, the awesome things I will do with that vial of dragonfire. So it is interesting to

I wish it had been a little more potent. There's a little bit of disappointment. I think when we give you some expectation, when we tell you a card ahead of time, we don't do that very often, so when we do, there's definitely some expectation on the audience's half, and so I wish we had not... I wish this was a little sexier than sort of a kind of card

you throw in your limited deck when you need more removal. I did like the...knot Weapons, but I thought it was cute. One example is where we didn't quite finish paying it off, which we really needed to. Okay, next. Volcanic Vision.

It's a seven mana card. Five generic mana, two red. So seven mana total, two of which is red. Sorcery. Return an incidental sorcery from your graveyard to your hand. Then you deal damage

equal to its converted mana cost to all opponents. Afterwards, you exile this card. Okay, so a couple things there. First off, red is allowed to get back instant sorceries. Usually, red gets back more sorceries and blue more instants, but both the red and blue as the spell colors can get back instant sorceries.

This one, though, is trying to make it extra red, which is not only getting it back, but it's then doing major damage to all your opponent's creatures. I'm sorry, all your opponent's creatures. Not opponents, all your opponent's creatures.

That's an important distinction. So it's kind of a red, a one-sided red wrath, except you, I mean, you have to choose what you get back, and the bigger thing you get back, the more things you can kill.

The reason it exiles itself, can anyone figure out why? A little design test here. The reason is because you can get it back. You don't want to create a loop cycle. It's already expensive. It's already seven mana. So if I get it back, then I can do seven mana to all my opponent's creatures. In general, when spells can get back things in which they can clue themselves, if they can get themselves back or another copy of themselves,

we put exile on it to keep loops from happening. This was seven mana. I know the loops are less of an issue. But still, in Commander or slower games, it can be a major issue. We didn't want it looping in Commander and stuff like that, so we put exile on it. But the thing I like about this is both blue and red being the creature spells, get interactive spells, we like where we can to make sure

that blue's versions feel blue and red's versions feel red. Obviously, yeah, both of them can get it back. We just make cards to get them back, but this is us trying to make a splashier red card, and it's also making use of an ability red does a little bit, but not a lot. So that's pretty cool.

Next, Youthful Scribe, three and a blue for a 2-2 human wizard. When he dies, draw two cards. So one of the things we knew is when you make a mechanic, you want to make what we call enablers for the mechanic, meaning it's not a card that has a mechanic, but it's a card that really helps you play that mechanic. And so this was made for exploit. This is an exploit enabler.

The idea being is, I'm more than happy to... The ability to draw two cards is pretty valuable. So the idea is you play this out, and then later on, when I need to exploit, this is a good target for exploiting. Because when I exploit, I'm going to get something. Like, I'm already getting something from my creature.

But the neat thing about this creature is, not only do I get something, but he gives me something to boot. So, like, I kind of get double. It's kind of like, this creature says, if you exploit me. But the neat thing about it is, it doesn't mention exploit by name. So, he also, you get it if he dies. You can block with him. You can be aggressive in attacking with him. The card is fine

in a vacuum. It's not like if you don't draw your exploit card that somehow you're sad you have this card. Look, he's a 2-2 that if your opponent doesn't deal with, it's going to net you cards. So, that's a pretty cool card. Okay, next. Zephyr Scribe. 2 and a blue for a 2-1 human monk.

For a U and tap, you're going to draw a card and then discard a card. And whenever you play a non-creature spell, you're going to untap it. So, this is a looter. This is a blue looter,

so you draw and discard. It costs one blue mana to use. The reason we don't... Looting once upon a time is just tap. The reason it not costs mana is looting's really powerful. A lot of those early looting spells

are just very, very good. And so we don't, unless we make it decently expensive, we don't tend to make looting free. We usually give some mana. This card does something cute, though, in that whenever you play a non-creature spell, it untaps. So you can do this cool thing where you can loot,

you know, you draw a non-creature spell, discard something else, and then you can play that non-creature spell that you just got, and then you can play that non-creature spell that you just got, and that enables you to untap this so you can loot again. Anyway, this is one of those things where

it also, being that it's a 2-1, you also sometimes can use the untap as a means to probably block something. There's a bunch of different utility you can use with this. You also could do something that has a tap, you can graft a tap effect onto it. I don't know

if there's a tap effect built into this set. There might be one. But I don't know off the top of my head. But anyway, it kind of just has multiple functions. One of the things that's nice is when you can find things that fit a purpose, do a very specific thing, fit what your set's doing, but also have multiple uses so people can feel clever

and find other things to do it. Okay, the final card, but I'm getting close to work, finally. Zergo Bellstriker. The final of the con cycle, the former con cycle. He costs a single red. He's a 2-2. He's a legendary creature, Orc Warrior.

He can't block creatures with power 2 or greater, and he has dash 1 and a red. He's a 2-2. He's a legendary creature, orc warrior. He can't block creatures with power 2 or greater, and he has dash, 1, and a red. Once again, he has dash, so he has the creature keyword, the clam keyword. So Zergo, we joked that he is Biff from Back to the Future.

That Biff is the bad guy, but when time has changed, Biff ends up being kind of a coward, and life doesn't go so well for him. So Zergo, in one timeline, was like the mightiest leader of the clan. You know, had a mighty dragon throne of a dragon skull. And now, eh,

things didn't go so well to him. Now he's ringing the bell. That when the dragon shows up, he's the guy that rings the bell. He has a very glorious life. And what we added is the Camp block power 2 or greater is what we call the coward text.

It comes from Brass Claw Orc way back in the day. And so the idea is he's a little cowardly. He's not as powerful. Now it turns out he as a card is actually very powerful.

Having a 2-2 for 1 red mana, even though he has a drawback, he wants to attack, so he can't block. Who cares? He's not going to block. So it turns out that the card actually is very powerful. So we had this kind of little why wink in that. Zergo is a powerful guy that has a lot of potential. His card is powerful. But, you know, on the surface, he seems like, hey, he's the guy that rings a lot of potential. His card is powerful. But, you know, on the surface, he seems like

hey, he's the guy that rings the bell. You know, he's the... In some ways, I feel like he fell to the false. I mean, I guess and the friends of CDC both died. But at least they're still... Even in death, they're fulfilling much more grandiose roles than Zergo, who's ringing the bell. And, like I said,

this is a fun card. The dash run is kind of cute. So it's the kind of thing where I can drop it as a one drop but later in the game you know sometimes the mana is what's

important to me the ability to have haste is and so later in the game you can dash him in just so you can haste with him so once I said

on an R2-2 you know you don't normally get an R2-2 a 2-2 creature for a single red mana. But anyway, that is Zergo Bellstriker. So he's a pretty flavorful card.

Okay, so as I park my car here, I can tell we had a pretty, yeah, another almost hour podcast. So the only difference this time is I didn't have twice the amount of cards to talk about. So hopefully you liked my extra filler today. I did manage to figure it out, so I ended up with the, as we ended, so that was

good. But anyway, that is my sixth and final podcast on Dragons of Tarkir. So I hope you guys had a good time sort of seeing all the things dragons were up to. And I have a fun surprise next time I do my design series. I'm not gonna tell you right now, but no fun things are coming. But anyway, I'm in my parking space. We all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. Thanks for joining me.